


Pieces

by SummerJay



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy is Alive, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, Post Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerJay/pseuds/SummerJay
Summary: It’s been a year since Hawkins, and Billy hopes running to California with Steve will hold the past at bay - for both of them. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn’t have happened without this amazing art: https://zayacv.tumblr.com/post/189869303780/its-past-midnight-perfect-time-for-nightmares
> 
> @zayacv on tumblr creates harringrove beauty that gives me life. Check them out!

His split lip starts burning suddenly, and Steve licks the salt away. It’s chilly on the shore, with the sun sinking into the gentle hues of orange and the winds picking up.

“We should go,” Steve says, smiling as he faces the ocean.

God, Billy is a natural. His tanned skin stretches over the firm muscles as he makes his way through the water. Steve puts his hands on his hips and stares shamelessly. Billy’s making a show, and Steve is so gonna let him.

“What, don’t like what you see?” Billy teases, one eyebrow quirked.

“We’re gonna be late.”

“So what?”

Billy reaches out first. He cups Steve’s face and leans in, eyes falling closed. Steve feels something hum deep down in his chest. The touch is not too careful, negligent almost. Familiar. As if it were always so easy for Billy to let his affection pour through the facade.

“It’s almost sunset,” Steve whispers.

Billy kisses him on the corner of the mouth, and it feels like a gift. Steve turns his head, and presses their lips together, barely for a second before Billy breaks the kiss.

“A pretty boy like you has nothing to worry…” Billy starts replying when his voice goes distant.

Calloused hands on Steve’s face suddenly feel like sand. Scratchy, transparent. Billy’s face with a soft half-smile is falling apart with the wind.

“Billy?” Steve can’t feel his hands at all anymore.

What the fuck? Steve lunges forward, grabbing Billy by the shoulder. The sand runs through his fingers and flies with the wind, never reaching the ground. It can’t be real. Steve looks around wildly, fist still closed midair.

What the actual fuck?

“Billy?!” He screams Billy’s name into the silence again and shivers, stumbling backwards: the ocean is fucking freezing.

It’s so dark.

His heart punches against his ribs, and Steve takes a ragged breath. It tastes like sand on his tongue. California is cold, dark and lonely around him. And Billy is gone.

***

Steve is in the kitchen when Billy walks in, hunched over the tabletop, swaying a glass absently with two fingers. His hair is chaotic after tossing on the pillow so much. Billy sighs and comes closer, letting the sight of that stupid hair, the deep blue of Steve’s hoodie, the steady “tick-tick” of the clock on the wall ground him.

It’s almost a routine now. They meet in the kitchen twice a month or so, Steve gulping water down and Billy tired and steaming from the hot shower, almost awkward at first. They’re going to ignore it in the morning. And the next day. And the day after that, all the way through life until sanity fails once again, throwing them back on the loop. Billy just hopes Steve has finally caved in and raided their underwhelming stock of whiskey instead of water that doesn’t do shit to calm his nerves anyway.

Billy puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder and gives it a firm and gentle squeeze. Steve doesn’t flinch but he stops rotating the glass around the wet mark on the wood.

“Hey,” Billy says silently. “Nightmares again?”

“Yeah.”

It’s fucking water, Billy notices when Steve gets up and presses into him, warm shaky palm on Billy’s bare skin. Billy holds him close, rubs small circles into the tense muscles until Steve breathes out and slides his hand lower, resting it on Billy’s hip.

4:12 AM. Billy lets the awareness slip into him. Steve isn’t the only one having nightmares, but Billy would never tell that his ones follow him far into the waking world. He won’t ever be so vulnerable again. He’ll die before that happens.

The Californian sun shines lazily through the curtains, and Steve relaxes into him, trusts him without a second thought. He believes unshakably for some reason that Billy will never touch to hurt him, and Billy feels the rock start rolling slowly off his chest. Billy leans, impulsively, to kiss the tip of Steve’s nose. The darkness couldn’t ever stand Harrington for too long.

Steve hums and presses a brief kiss to Billy’s lips. He pulls back and wrinkles his nose when Billy’s wet hair touches his neck.

“You’re dripping.” The shaking stops completely, and he’s finally back, ruffled and warm and awake. Billy glances at the clock and then grins, wide and bright.

“Only for you, baby. Let’s go to bed.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees, lacing their fingers.

It’s still dark enough when they get under the covers, and Billy tenses momentarily, moving away to avoid touching Steve. No fucking way. It’s taken them two months already to even start sleeping in the same bed again, and Steve is not about to let that progress go to waste because of one bad day.

He rolls to the side and catches Billy’s shoulder.

“You’re not dragging your ass outta bed again, Hargrove.”

“Who’s so fucking bossy tonight?” Billy shoots back, but the smirk is evident in his voice.

He’s still so tense, like a bloody guitar string ready to break and punch you in the eye, and Steve moves slowly but confidently enough not to transmit hesitation. He steadies himself with a palm flat on Billy’s bare chest and leans down, close enough to let his lips ghost over Billy’s ear.

“Clearly, not you,” Steve whispers.

The reaction is immediate. A familiar dangerous quirk of lips, and then Billy grabs his hips to pull Steve down, and then he stills completely. It’s a titanic effort not to groan in frustration. Steve feels it buzzing all over him, the white-hot _need_ that always comes ridiculously quickly when it’s about Billy. Nothing is ever slow with Billy. And Steve misses it so much he can barely control the burning desire to wrap around Billy, get so close they’re inseparable and never let go.

For Steve, it always feels like he’s miles away, no matter how much time passes between these nightmares. But Billy, he knows, doesn’t feel lost. With all that happened, it’s not a particularly complicated puzzle, even with Billy’s dedicated refusal to ever talk about Hawkins - or feelings.

Steve trails his lips along Billy’s jaw and leaves a hot dirty kiss on his neck, thrusting his hips down. Billy’s fingers curl around the hem of his sweatpants, his breathing hitches.

For Billy, it’s about control that slips through his fingers when there is no light, no sound, no clock visible to make him feel present in the moment.

Steve’s own heartbeat flies through the roof when he hooks his legs around Billy’s ankles and rolls back away, pulling Billy with him, on top of him. He can’t fight a shiver that rips through him at the familiar solid weight. Billy grinds his hips down instinctively, hard cock pressing into Steve’s for one divine moment before he settles and pulls at Steve’s hoodie.

“King Steve is needy tonight?”

It’s almost there - the relaxation, the familiar edge to how Billy grins down at him before crushing their lips together. He just needs a little push, another little proof.

Steve locks their eyes and takes Billy’s hand, dragging it to his lips, letting it trace his skin. He spreads his knees wider, using as much leverage as he has, kisses Billy’s palm and forces it down to lay on his throat.

“Please,” Steve says quietly, his Adam’s apple pressing into Billy’s hand as he speaks, “for me. You’re not gonna hurt me.”

Billy isn’t squeezing his throat a tiniest fraction, but Steve still finds he can’t breathe under Billy’s intense stare. Billy’s nails scratch Steve’s skin, as if it took him a huge effort to stay still.

“It’s a bad idea.”

“Oh really?” Steve hopes Billy can see his raised eyebrow in the darkness and pointedly thrusts up, rubbing against Billy’s cock. “Are you completely sure you believe it?”

Billy lingers in indecision, a coil that doesn’t spring out but unravels slowly, fighting against whatever is compressing it.

Then finally - fucking finally - he feels Billy tighten his fingers on his throat, purposefully and firmly, and whines, letting his eyes fall closed for a second. Panic surges through him and dies down, settling as a warm tingling in his stomach. Billy leans down to bite at his lips, and Steve opens his mouth, surrendering a little too soon.

Billy kisses him as if Steve were the oxygen to his flame. He moves away from his lips and covers his neck, his chest with angry red marks, sliding his free hand into Steve’s pants and wrapping it around his leaking cock. Steve gasps and lifts his hips, immediately falling into a coughing fit.

“Ah yes,” Billy says sweetly, dragging his palm agonizingly slowly to the tip and smearing a drop of precum over the head, “you probably shouldn’t move too much, babe.”

“Bastard,” Steve rasps. Billy’s hand fits snugly under Steve’s jaw, and he can’t even writhe without cutting his airflow further. It’s bloody perfect. “God Billy…” Billy speeds up a little, and Steve can’t control what escapes his lips anymore, the dry painful friction just raw enough to make his mind float.

“That’s it, babe. Let it go.”

With the last remnants of his sanity, Steve notices that Billy is flushed and relaxed now.

“Fuck me,” Steve says, voice shaking, “God, please, I need you.”

He will die right then if Billy doesn’t comply. But Billy’s never been good at waiting.

“Damn right I will,” he growls and disentangles himself from Steve in one jerky motion to get rid of his own pants and bring the lube from the nightstand.

For all the time they’ve been fucking, it’s crazy how it can still wreck them so completely. Steve doesn’t try to maintain composure when Billy pushes one finger inside him, slips in the second, then finally - oh god, bloody finally - fills him with his cock and returns a hand to Steve’s throat without prompting. It’s a mess of whines and “fucks” and “harder,” and of the enveloping heat all around them, until it explodes, and the only thing that Steve can feel is Billy coming, still buried deep inside him.

It’s too much effort to move, so Billy quickly wipes the cum with the opposite side of the blanket and returns to Steve’s arms, holding him close. He’s silent for a moment. Steve knows exactly what he’s going to ask in a second and beats him to it.

“I’m okay. Really. I’m wonderful, actually.”

Billy huffs, “I know you are. You weren’t particularly ambiguous… ow,” he grins when Steve smacks him on the shoulder. Billy shuts up, long enough to press a gentle kiss to Steve’s burning throat. “I think I rather like the look.”

Well, that’s new.

“You were rather unambiguous about that,” Steve responds lightly, a flicker of hope in his chest.

Billy laughs, dropping his head to the pillow and relaxing into Steve’s body.

“Never denied it, babe.”

A year ago, back in Hawkins, Steve fell off Robin’s couch, jolting awake from a nightmare so vivid he could remember it clearly weeks after it’d happened. “Being a family disappointment is a freelance position,” Robin shrugged then, when they were half through the bucket of emergency chocolate ice-cream, “but California won’t fix everything. I know you don’t wanna let him go. But do you wanna go with him?”

Steve presses his forehead to Billy’s and closes his eyes. He barely understood the difference back then, but now he knows the answer. He lays his hand on Billy’s chest, where his heart is strong and alive, and falls into a silent dreamless sleep.


End file.
